5 Stupid Reasons To Delay The DTV Transition

The House is re-examining a bill to delay the transition to digital television, a switch which has been years in the making. The mainstream media echo chamber, meanwhile, is uncritically parroting some extremely stupid reasons to delay the transition.

1. The transition will disproportionately affect elderly people.

This is false. According to a January 22 report from Nielsen – the most recent report available – people over age 55 are actually more prepared than the general population as a whole. Only 4% of older folks are unready, compared to 5.7% of the general population and 8.8% of folks under age 35.

2. Old people are idiots.

I’m shocked the AARP hasn’t gotten up in arms about the portrayal of everyone over 60 in this nation as a bunch of drooling infantile idiots, who think their TV is a magic box with little people inside, and when the little
people stop dancing, they will sit in a pool of their own pee and cry. The infantilization of older Americans by the anti-transition crowd has to stop; it’s simply disgusting.

More after the jump.

The people I know over the age of 80 aren’t stupid. They’re just stubborn and would rather not bother with something unless it’s an imperative. My grandmother is still on dialup Internet, not DSL, because it works fine for her. My grandfather watches a TV with a busted vertical hold because he just doesn’t care enough to get it fixed. They’re not incompetent, they’ve chosen to conserve their energy and not bother. Big difference.

The result: no string of PSAs will get the last few percent of people to suddenly get up and go get a converter box. They will not go get a converter box until their TVs stop working. Then they will all do it, or maybe just watch less TV. Choosing not to bother is different from being an infant.

3. TV is an essential service for public safety.

This is often said by anti-DTV forces in Congress, and I can’t believe they say it with a straight face. TV is an awful way to get public safety messages out. TVs are generally bulky, stuck in one place, and dependent on house power. Never mind that the last time there was a disaster in my hometown – in the fall, about seven years ago – it took out the TV towers.

Radio, on the other hand, works great in disasters. Radios are portable and durable. Many work on batteries or even with hand cranks. In a disaster, every major AM radio station goes into disaster-relief mode. TV is totally irrelevant.

4. The switch will require you to go up on an icy roof in the rain.

This is also false. A small number of people will be have to switch from indoor to rooftop antennas, true. But for most Americans, a $19.99 set of rabbit ears from Radio Shack will do just fine. I’ve put my eyeballs where my mouth is and tested those Radio Shack rabbit ears, along with an even cheaper RCA antenna and a downright nice $60 Winegard indoor antenna. With the Winegard, I can pull in stations 25 miles away, across the gigantic wall of radio interference that is Manhattan.

Also, many channels won’t be able to transmit at full digital power until they turn off their analog signals. So you’ll get much better digital reception after the transition. Here in New York, for instance, our PBS station is currently transmitting at low power on channel 61. After the transition, they’ll switch to much higher power on channel 13. Pow – reception will get much easier for many people.

5. Delaying the switch hurts no one.

Since we’ve been preparing for this switch for years, the government went ahead and sold the analog spectrum that will be abandoned to various paying customers who want to use it for new services. Think they’ll all like not getting what they paid for? I suspect there will be a legal and financial reckoning. Let’s also take a moment to think of the TV stations themselves,
who didn’t budget for broadcasting dual signals for another four months. In an extremely weak economy, do we want to punch broadcasters in the gut so a tiny percentage of dead-enders can continue to procrastinate? I don’t think so.